The Price of Glory

by Seth Hunter

  Grimaldi stood up and seized his arm. “Let him die,” he pleaded. “The priest has given him the last rites. Let him die here and in peace. And then we will go with you.”

  Nathan looked at the windows again, at the motes of dust swirling in the sunbeams. He sighed.

  “Very well. I will give you until tomorrow morning,” he said. “I know it is harsh, but then if he is still alive we must take him with us and carry him to the coast.”

  He told Whiteley what he had decided.

  “Well, they have been here three weeks and the French have not found them,” offered the marine. “I do not suppose another day will make much difference. Touching wood.” Whiteley had been long enough with mariners to share their superstitions.

  Nathan told him about the police officer they had sent from Paris. He kept the Englishman to himself. “If they have interrogated the sailors in the fort at Monaco they must know where they landed.”

  “But they cannot have told them they were making for the abbey,” Whiteley pointed out. “Or they would be here by now.”

  This was true.

  “I will post a man in the belltower, all the same,” said Whiteley. “And we might as well make a camp here,” he added, looking about the chapel. “Unless you have any objections.”

  “None at all.” Nathan looked up at the wrecked altar. “But there is something else I must do.” The lieutenant looked at him enquiringly. “There is someone I must try to find. In a village near here.”

  Whiteley was puzzled. “The doctor?” he said. “The priest?”

  Nathan shook his head. “He has already …” But then he stopped himself. It was a gift from the heavens. “Yes,” he said. “The priest.”

  “Do you think that is wise? I mean, with respect, sir, I know the old man is close to death but …”

  “It is something I have to do,” Nathan insisted. “But if I am not back by nightfall, then tomorrow, at crack of dawn, you must leave—with the whole family, and Grimaldi in a litter if needs be. But I must make that an order, Mr. Whiteley, is that clear? If I am not back at first light, you must leave without me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Whiteley’s face was stony. As well it might be. If he had placed Nathan under close arrest under armed guard there was not a court martial that would find against him. “But if I might be permitted to observe, sir, it is a reckless piece of work for the sake of a dying man and a Papist priest.”

  “I know, but there it is.”

  “And if he is not there?”

  “Then I will come straight back.” But then he thought again. “Or I will make my own way to the rendezvous. That is why you must not wait for me here.”

  He took his pack with him but not the map. He left that for Whiteley in case he was not back in time. He knew where he was going for he had looked at it so often on the map it was lodged firmly in his mind. The one certainty in so many imponderables. So many ghosts, so many rumours and conjectures and that one tantalising glimpse of a woman on a white horse riding into the waves. The one fixed point in his life: his lodestar. A village about five miles from here where there was a café in a square where a little girl used to sit with her father on market days and watch the world go by.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Bitter Oranges

  HE CUT A STOUT STICK from a tree of myrtle, keeping a few of the leaves to crush in his hands for the scent. It reminded him of Sara and he wondered if she had used it in Paris, though he could not have put a name to it then. Perhaps it reminded her of her home in the mountains of Provence for it grew plentifully here, as it did in the Holy Land. It was a sacred plant in many religions. The Jews, he recalled, gave it to a bridegroom on his wedding night, and to a man who did good works, though unversed in the scriptures.

  He made good time at first, following a long winding track that skirted the valleys, though always climbing. He thought it might be a goat track but then he came across a roadside shrine—a simple cross—which had not been made by cloven hooves. He decided it must be a pilgrim route, possibly connected with the abbey, though he did not encounter any pilgrims, or indeed any other travellers, in the course of his own short pilgrimage.

  He walked through slopes of scrub and broom and stunted pines that leaned far out into the valley. Spring flowers grew in abundance among the grasses and he smelt the strong aroma of herbs. And every where was the sound of running water from mountain streams swollen by the melting snows. He did not want for refreshment and the climb was not arduous. He took off his coat, folded it into his pack and strode along in his shirtsleeves and breeches, using his walking stick for rhythm as much as for support. He had the route engraved in his mind and was able to navigate by the sun and the glimpses of sea he caught between the rolling hills. But then he was forced to descend into pine forest and follow a tortuous network of paths and tracks, his footsteps cushioned by a thick layer of pine needles, often veering from his course but always returning to it. He lost the sea as his guide but the sun stayed with him, though he did not care for the speed of its descent towards the hills in the west. He knew he would have difficulty getting back before dark. But at last, emerging from the trees, he saw a small town on a distant hilltop and knew it was Tourettes.

  It was one thing to see it; quite another to reach it, for it was set upon a pinnacle of rock at a height above the surrounding country and flanked by a deep river gorge. It took Nathan almost two hours before he reached the town walls and another half hour before he found a way in through an unguarded gate. He began to climb the steep and winding streets, the houses crowding in so closely he could barely glimpse the sky. There were few people about and those he met rewarded him with a hard, curious stare, their eyes darting away from his, though they responded shyly to his amiable greetings and one of them directed him to the town square, which was almost at its highest point where the church tower rose above the surrounding rooftops. He dreaded the sight of a blue uniform and the familiar demand for “Papiers!” for though he had brought the certificat de civisme that he had used in Paris and the permit allowing him to journey to Le Havre, neither would pass muster here in Provence—and he could hardly claim to have lost his way. His best hope was that if he was stopped, the official could not read, which was not unlikely, and would be fooled by the official police stamp. If not, his story was that he was an American seaman whose ship had put in at Nice and that he had taken the opportunity to walk in the hills and did not know he needed a permit to do so. But far, far better if he was not asked.

  Finally he reached the square. And there was the café, directly opposite the church, with a closed sign on the door and the shutters up.

  It looked as if it had been closed for a long time. The notice required by the State—listing all the occupants of the dwelling—was still pasted at the side of the door but the ink was bleached to a dull brown and Nathan could not make out the names.

  He looked about him. The place was deserted. Perhaps it was siesta time. Then he saw the old man. He was sitting on a bench under the shade of an umbrella pine next to the water trough in the middle of the square. He seemed to be asleep. Nathan went over to him and sat down beside him. The man stirred, gave a loud snore and woke himself up.

  “A fine day, monsieur,” Nathan greeted him politely.

  The old man pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth and whiskers but did not speak. Nathan wondered if he should have called him Citoyen.

  “Does the café open at all?” Nathan asked, when a few moments had passed in a not quite amicable silence.

  “Never,” said the old man.

  “Never? Ah. That is a pity.”

  The old man said something he did not catch. Possibly it was the dialect. Also the fact that he spoke very deep in his throat and scarcely moved his lips, like the grumbling of a long dormant volcano or the grunting of a pig, Nathan thought, scavenging for acorns in a forest. Nathan did not share these comparisons with the old man, however, but remarked that he had walked up from
the coast and would have welcomed a beer, or even a lemonade.

  The old man said nothing.

  “Is the water fit to drink?” asked Nathan after another lengthy silence. The man gave another grunt which might have been yes or no. Nathan stood up to work the pump and splashed some water over himself. He pulled his shirt out from his trousers and wiped his face with it and then sat down again.

  “That is better,” he said. And then, emboldened: “So why is the café never open?”

  The old man told him the story. It was so long and told in such an impenetrable patois that Nathan lost the thread early on and never took it up, but he gathered it involved a great many deaths for so small a place and much sadness. When he had finished the story, the old man spat in the dust, settling his gnarled hands upon his stick, his chin dropping down upon his chest.

  “I knew someone who came here as a child,” Nathan prompted him, before he went to sleep again. “With her father. He was an old soldier. A Scot. His name was Seton. Perhaps you knew him.”

  The old man turned toward him and Nathan saw with a shock that he was blind. He said something that sounded like “guarda-costa” which was the name of a small Spanish ship-of-war stationed in the Spanish islands of the Caribbean. Nathan had encountered them in Cuba but he doubted if the old man had. Then Nathan realised he must have said, “La Garde Écossaise”—which was the name of the Scottish Guard, an elite regiment formed by the old Valois kings in the 15th century as their bodyguard.

  “That is right,” he said. “La Garde Écossaise.”

  “The siegneur,” the old man nodded. “Yes, I knew him. And his daughter, the little girl—what was her name?”

  “Sara. Her name was Sara.”

  “That is right. Little Sara.”

  Little Sara. This blind, old man is my last contact with her, Nathan thought. This is as near as I am going to get.

  “They lived in the manoir, the Scottish soldier and his little girl. Yes, I remember. The mother died.” He said something else that Nathan did not catch—apart from a word that sounded like belle.

  “And is it still there, the manoir?”

  “Oh yes. It is still there. About two kilometres from here, along the river.” He took one hand off his stick and lifted it with a great effort, pointing blindly down the hill towards the sun. “But the father died a long time ago. And the little girl, she went away. No-one lives there, since before the Revolution.”

  And he spat again, into the dust.

  Nathan walked down through the steep streets of the town in the direction the old man had indicated. It was only a small detour, he told himself, and then he would begin the long walk back to the ruined abbey. But he wanted to see the place where Sara had been born and where she had lived the first few years of her life. He would tell Alex about it when he next returned home. He wished he had brought his sketchbook with him so he might draw it for him. But perhaps he could do it from memory.

  He followed the river, which must be the Vence, for a mile or so until he saw the manoir ahead of him. At first glance he thought it was a simple donjon: a fat, round tower with a pointed roof like a witch’s hat, but then he saw that there was another tower on the far side, flanked by two wings with smaller, sharper towers at each corner. Not pretty. Too stout, too staunch to be pretty. Too rugged. When he looked upon it he thought more of the old soldier than he thought of Sara. Trees pressed close upon the ivy-clad walls and there were swallows nesting in the eaves. At night there would be bats and owls. It was by no means a ruin, but clearly deserted.

  He was about to turn away, for he had little time now to reach the abbey before dark, when he heard something. A sigh in the air, almost like the wind soughing through the pines. And then it came to him that it was singing, and he felt a prickling in his scalp, for it was like the singing of a Siren. He thought of the little girl going into Tourettes with her father in the old carriage they had, singing a country air she had learned. He went closer, as he was meant to, being a sailor, drawn to the Siren’s song, on to the rocks. It seemed to come from behind the wall that ran along the rear of the building. Nathan could hear the words now and it was as if he had heard them before, though he could not think where, for it was a song of Provence. A love song.

  Je vous aime tant, sans mentir

  Qu’on pourrait tarir

  La haute mer

  Et ses ondes retenir

  Avant qu’on puisse me prevenir

  De vous aimer.

  He took a run at the wall and hauled himself up by the ivy so he could look over.

  And there she was. Hanging out washing upon a line.

  She stopped singing and looked up and saw him, peering over the wall at her.

  “What are you staring at?” she demanded. “Go away. Shoo!” She flapped a hand at him as if he were a hen. “Shoo! Vagabond!”

  He scrambled over the wall and dropped down to the other side. “How dare you!” she said. “This is private.” She raised her voice then and shouted back towards the house. Nathan walked over to her but stopped a yard or so away because he did not know what to do next. He thought she was a ghost and that if he tried to touch her or take her in his arms she would melt into the air, or he would be left hugging a sheet like a lunatic out of Bedlam.

  She stared at him for a moment. Then she dropped the basket she was carrying and put her hand to her mouth—and he saw that she had recognised him.

  There was a shout from the house.

  “Dégage! Va-t’-en! Ou je tire.”

  Nathan looked up and saw a man in an open window with a gun—a fowling piece—pointing straight at him. He raised his arms hastily aloft and Sara cried out: “Non, Matthieu, c’est un ami!” And then Nathan knew it was truly her and not a Siren, not a ghost, but that it was Sara and that at last he had found her.

  . . .

  They sat on a bench in the garden in the evening sunshine.

  “Is it really you?” She touched his face with her hand in several places, almost professionally, like an artist feeling the mouldings of a clay sculpture. “You feel as if you are real,” she conceded with a frown.

  She looked different. Her hair was cut short and raggedly, like an urchin’s, and it was fairer than he remembered it in Paris, almost blonde. And she was thinner than she had been, then, even at the time of the Terror and her face and arms were as tanned as a peasant’s. His New York aunts would have recoiled and said she looked like an Indian. Nathan thought she looked beautiful, even more beautiful than when he first saw her in Paris. She smelled of fresh laundry and sunshine.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said. “I thought they had killed you.” She brushed a hand across her face as if at a fly. “They nearly did. Many times. But you—what are you doing here?”

  “I came to find you,” he said.

  She looked at him wonderingly. Then she laughed. Or at least it was half a laugh.

  “But—are we not at war?”

  “Yes. And I am the captain of a ship-of-war. It is waiting for us on the coast, a few miles from here.”

  She shook her head. “This is not real.”

  “I will take you there and then you will see.”

  “But—how did you find me?”

  “I went to the café, where you said you would be waiting for me.”

  “It is closed,” she said. “It was closed a long time ago.”

  “I know. An old man told me. He told me about this place, too, but he said no-one lived here.”

  “He was right. I am a ghost.” Her eyes were sad.

  “And what about him?” Nathan jerked his head back at the house. “Is he a ghost?”

  “Oh, that is Matthieu, the son of one of my father’s old servants. He looks after me and brings me food from the village.”

  “Then you are not lovers?” He had to ask.

  “What? Me and Matthieu?” She chuckled deep in her throat and he remembered it was one of the things that had made him love her.

  “So will
you come with me?”

  “Oh Nathan, I cannot believe it is you.” “Nat-’an,” she said, as she had in Paris. As her son Alex did. “I had forgotten what you looked like. Until now. I still cannot believe you are real.” She touched his face again and his hair. “My beautiful boy that I knew in Paris.”

  He did not quite like the sound of that. Or the sadness in her voice. She spoke of the past as if it was something she had lost forever.

  “I told you in Paris,” he said. “You cannot call a man beautiful. It is I who must say that to you.”

  “Oh, Nathan, so much has happened since then.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I don’t think you do,” she chided him gently.

  He wondered if he should tell her about seeing her on the beach at Quiberon. But perhaps not. They were his men she had been cursing, as they fired on her people. He suddenly felt the huge distance that was between them.

  “I want you to come with me,” he said. “Back to England.”

  “To England?”

  “To live with me in England.”

  “You still want me, after all this while?”

  “If you will have me.”

  “Oh, Nathan, I wanted so much to be with you. When we were in Paris. Always.”

  “But not now.”

  “Now, it is not possible.” Ce n’est pas possible.

  The phrase tore at his insides, so much sadder and more final than it would have sounded in English, like a line from a tragedy by Corneille. He remembered now, the plays by Corneille that she used to read when he knew her in Paris. He thought she had become too attached to tragedy.

  “I cannot leave France.” Her voice was quiet but firm.

  “Why not? What is in France for you now?” He wanted to shake her out of it, to pull her free from the clutches of Corneille. “There is only sadness for you here.” Sadness and memories.

  “Alex is here,” she said simply. “My son.” As if he might have forgotten she had a son. “I have people looking for him in Paris. They will bring him here.” He opened his mouth to speak but she put her finger on his lips. “No, Nathan, listen to me. I cannot leave Alex.” It came out in a rush. “I cannot go and look for him myself. I am an outlaw. I am wanted by the police. If they catch me they will shoot me, or take off my head on the guillotine. They will put him in an orphanage, and if they ever find out who he is, that he is the Comte de Turenne, then he will never leave it alive.”